Black Celebration
It's the end of a black week. We're glad it's past.
First, there was the weather. The week before we were just getting used to shirtsleeves Spring weather. Last week? Cold. Arctic cold. Perhaps the coldest it's been all winter. There was concern for the trees and flowers which had just started to bloom. And we got more snow than all winter also. I had to take taxis to the station all week - it was either snowing or raining or threatening to. I wore a scarf again. Today it's sunny and shirtsleeves weather once again.
Margo was on duty last week. Every fourth week she's on duty, which means that, in addition to her normal caseload, she is also on call to handle incoming cases. For us, this means she'll probably be home late a few nights, and that Margo will be extra stressed.
The week before last, we got a forwarded letter from the Canadian Immigration Centre in Buffalo, New York informing us that our immigration application would be closed if they didn't receive our medical exam results soon. But we'd had our medical exams in November and were assured the results would be sent to them. Panic! The week before I called the medical centre where we had our exams and received the name of the medical courier who picked up the results, plus a tracking number. I then called the courier and was told the name of the person who signed for them at the Canadian High Commission.
On Monday morning I tubed to the Canadian High Commission on Grosvenor Street in Mayfair. I couldn't meet with anyone as they no longer process requests in person, so I had to fill out a form and wait for a response within two days. I did get a phone call two days later confirming that our exam results had been received and forwarded on to the Buffalo office.
What to do? We don't want to see our application closed over events outside our control. This kept me on edge much of the week. I typed all this up in an email to the Buffalo office. (No phone numbers are available - the only way to contact is via post or email.) Days later I got a response that they would look into it. I feel I can relax about that now.
Margo got a nasty cold the week before last, spending several days home. I picked it up last week after trying to avoid it. It wasn't bad, but it's no fun to realise you'll be feeling awful for at least a week and there's not much you can do about it.
We also ended weeks of struggle in determining how to report our foreign earnings with our US tax return. We use online tax software, and when we tried to report foreign income, it kept shunting us to forms where we'd have to choose an income exclusion type. We haven't lived overseas long enough to qualify for the exclusion, so we couldn't claim it, but didn't know how else to report it. We tried setting it up as W-2 income, even setting up substitute W-2 forms, but they were considered errors by the software as we could not give a value for the federal employer ID numbers. Finally, after some online research, I found there was another way to add foreign income in the software, but doing so largely wiped out our refund amount. Margo did more research and found where we can enter the tax we paid in the UK as a deduction, bringing much of our refund back. We e-filed this morning, so it's good to have that finished too.
Fortunately I had some excellent Italian red left over from the Mothers' Day meal I'd made last weekend (it's celebrated earlier in the UK) so we were able to celebrate the week's end properly last night.
First, there was the weather. The week before we were just getting used to shirtsleeves Spring weather. Last week? Cold. Arctic cold. Perhaps the coldest it's been all winter. There was concern for the trees and flowers which had just started to bloom. And we got more snow than all winter also. I had to take taxis to the station all week - it was either snowing or raining or threatening to. I wore a scarf again. Today it's sunny and shirtsleeves weather once again.
Margo was on duty last week. Every fourth week she's on duty, which means that, in addition to her normal caseload, she is also on call to handle incoming cases. For us, this means she'll probably be home late a few nights, and that Margo will be extra stressed.
The week before last, we got a forwarded letter from the Canadian Immigration Centre in Buffalo, New York informing us that our immigration application would be closed if they didn't receive our medical exam results soon. But we'd had our medical exams in November and were assured the results would be sent to them. Panic! The week before I called the medical centre where we had our exams and received the name of the medical courier who picked up the results, plus a tracking number. I then called the courier and was told the name of the person who signed for them at the Canadian High Commission.
On Monday morning I tubed to the Canadian High Commission on Grosvenor Street in Mayfair. I couldn't meet with anyone as they no longer process requests in person, so I had to fill out a form and wait for a response within two days. I did get a phone call two days later confirming that our exam results had been received and forwarded on to the Buffalo office.
What to do? We don't want to see our application closed over events outside our control. This kept me on edge much of the week. I typed all this up in an email to the Buffalo office. (No phone numbers are available - the only way to contact is via post or email.) Days later I got a response that they would look into it. I feel I can relax about that now.
Margo got a nasty cold the week before last, spending several days home. I picked it up last week after trying to avoid it. It wasn't bad, but it's no fun to realise you'll be feeling awful for at least a week and there's not much you can do about it.
We also ended weeks of struggle in determining how to report our foreign earnings with our US tax return. We use online tax software, and when we tried to report foreign income, it kept shunting us to forms where we'd have to choose an income exclusion type. We haven't lived overseas long enough to qualify for the exclusion, so we couldn't claim it, but didn't know how else to report it. We tried setting it up as W-2 income, even setting up substitute W-2 forms, but they were considered errors by the software as we could not give a value for the federal employer ID numbers. Finally, after some online research, I found there was another way to add foreign income in the software, but doing so largely wiped out our refund amount. Margo did more research and found where we can enter the tax we paid in the UK as a deduction, bringing much of our refund back. We e-filed this morning, so it's good to have that finished too.
Fortunately I had some excellent Italian red left over from the Mothers' Day meal I'd made last weekend (it's celebrated earlier in the UK) so we were able to celebrate the week's end properly last night.
posted by Michael Nelson at 8:47 am
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